Kwani Trust

• Zimbabwe Votes - An Interview With Zenzele Ndebele

  Posted: March 28, 2008, 10:29 am by Kwani

  (Zenzele Ndebele is a Zimbabwean journalist, managing editor of zimpatriot.com, and the creator of Gukurahundi: A Moment of Madness, a documentary about Robert Mugabe’s military campaign against the Ndebele people of southern Zimbabwe. Zenzele snuck across the border to debut his film in Johannesburg last November; on returning home, police threats of violence and incarceration forced him into hiding for several weeks. Kwani? caught up with him for an online interview about Saturday’s presidential election.) (more…)

• Kwani? Open Mic - April 1, 2008

  Posted: March 27, 2008, 11:58 am by Kwani

  Presenting:

  Black Skillz
  With
  Live Neo Soul Music
  by Anto

  7-10pm, 1st April
  Club Soundd
  Kaunda Street
  Entry Only KSh100

  Limited Open Mic slots are available on a strictly first-come
  first-serve basis during the sound check between 5 & 6 pm on the day.

• The Road To Eldoret - Tony Mochama

  Posted: March 25, 2008, 2:07 pm by Tony Mochama

  The scene from his hotel room screen in Nakuru still fills his mind. Let’s call him M. He’s from Muranga, he still drives the Datsun 120 Y that he bought in 1972 when he was a twenty two year old boy, and he’s got a family in the outskirts of Eldoret where his wife runs the family farm (cows and wheat) that he bought in 1982 from a white man fleeing the coup that “never happened,” as he is fond of saying. “So I got the farm cheap.” (more…)

• How to Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina

  Posted: March 24, 2008, 1:33 pm by Kwani

  Author: Binyavanga Wainaina
  Series: Kwanini

  This trio of sharp-witted essays takes irony to a new level. In How to Write About Africa, Wainaina dissects the African clichés and preconceptions dear to western writers and readers with a ruthless precision. (more…)

• You in America by Chimamanda Adichie

  Posted: March 24, 2008, 1:29 pm by Kwani

  Author: Chimamanda Adichie
  Series: Kwanini

  This is a love story disguised as a travelogue, the tale of a young Nigerian woman who wins a lottery whose prize is a green card to America. Does everyone there own a big house, a big car, and a gun? Not quite, though it turns out there are worse things than guns. Chimamanda Adichie takes us effortlessly from the shanties of Lagos to downtown Connecticut, where love – uninvited but not unwelcome – turns up to eat at a restaurant.

• Weight of Whispers by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Posted: March 24, 2008, 1:12 pm by Kwani

  Author: Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
  Series: Kwanini
  Awards: 2003 Caine Prize

  Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor followed Wainaina’s example by winning the 2003 Caine Prize with her evocative tale of a Rwandan aristocrat who fled to Kenya in the wake of the 1994 genocide. The characters in Weight of Whispers come draped in history, wrapping the world’s dramas around their own as they struggle to adjust to their lengthy fall from grace. In this story of exile and death, Owuor draws us masterfully into a quest for light, and life.

• Discovering Home by Binyavanga Wainaina

  Posted: March 23, 2008, 2:53 pm by Kwani

  
  Author: Binyavanga Wainaina
  Series: Kwanini
  Awards: Winner of the 2002 Caine Prize for African fiction

  Winner of the 2002 Caine Prize for African fiction, Discovering Home tells the Kenyan version of that universal story: returning home and seeing it for the first time. By turns compassionate and bitingly ironic, this Kwanini takes readers on a whirlwind journey from Rift Valley to Maasailand and beyond. Along the way, the social geography underlying family relations, political contacts, the Ndombolo dance and the Sunday sermon are revealed in all their solemn hilarity.

• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie

  Posted: March 23, 2008, 2:43 pm by Kwani

  
  Author: Chimamanda Adichie
  Series: Kwani

  Chimamanda Adichie was 25 years old when she wrote her debut novel, which isn’t in itself a reason to read it. But it does add to the wonder evoked by such a gripping narration of the many forms oppression can take. Purple Hibiscus follows a young woman’s liberation from her tyrannical father; it is a drama within a drama, placed in the Nigerian context of western colonial influence and a powerful Christianity bent on stamping out the last traces of native religion.

• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie

  Posted: March 23, 2008, 2:33 pm by Kwani

  
  Author: Chimamanda Adichie
  Series: Kwani

  In 1967, most African nations were caught up in the euphoria of the independence movement that had recently swept the continent. But when Nigeria’s Igbo people declared their independence from the mother state, the country became one of the first in post-colonial Africa to go to war with itself. (more…)

• Kizuizini by Joseph Muthee

  Posted: March 23, 2008, 2:21 pm by Kwani

  
  Author: Joseph Muthee
  Series: Kwani

  In 1954, at the height of the Special Emergency that preceded Kenyan independence, Joseph Muthee was sent to prison by his colonial boss on suspicion of being a Mau Mau rebel. Kizuizini is his autobiographical account of the five years he spent in detention, half a decade of continuous transfer from one harsh jail to another. It is also a chronicle of the Mau Mau themselves – what they fought for, where they hid, and who betrayed them. Writing in Swahili from his farm in central Kenya, the now-80-year-old Muthee has provided a rare glimpse into his country’s turbulent birth.

• Kwani? 04

  Posted: March 23, 2008, 2:01 pm by Kwani

  Following the great tradition set by its three predecessors, Kwani? 04 presents a wail of new voices in literary concert with the not so new. The now established talents - Binyavanga Wainaina, Muthoni Garland, Doreen Baingana- share these pages with the fast risers: Billy Kahora, Mukoma wa Ngugi and Shalini Gidoomal. (more…)

• Kwani? 03

  Posted: March 23, 2008, 1:54 pm by Kwani

  The recently published kwani? 03 has been described by critics and kwani? lovers alike as the best of the series and an indicator of how Kenya’s most popular journal has grown. In all aspects – editing, design, layout and breadth of material, kwani? 03 introduces a new chapter to the creative writing scene. Themed on the seventies, the cover uses the visual arts to make the written word as interesting and interactive as possible. Established writers M. G. Vassanji and Zimbabwe’s Charles Mungoshi grace its pages, among several other new writers published, for the first time, in kwani? 03. Creative non-fiction with social commentary also appears in the new issue, marking a new phase for kwani?.

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The end of the fish cakes